davel

Paywall bypass: https://archive.today/CqMkl

Paywall bypass: https://archive.today/ZcGhn

Never heard of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophe_bond

Catastrophe bonds (also known as cat bonds) are a subset of insurance-linked securities (ILS) that transfer a specified set of risks from a sponsor to investors. They were created and first used in the mid-1990s in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew and the Northridge earthquake.

As Azerbaijan takes an increasingly hostile approach to both Russia and Iran, it risks becoming a proxy in a wider regional war. Azerbaijan's Zangezur corridor connects Azerbaijan closer to Turkey, and thus NATO. Many uncertainties emerge in terms of what happens to Armenia, to what extent Turkey and NATO can project power that deep into the South Caucasus, and how Russia and Iran will react. Lasha Kasradze is an international affairs analyst from Georgia, and an expert on the wider region.

In political debates between left and right, what gets lost is this obvious point:

The powerful maintain their power through an insistence that change is dangerous. They want power structures unchanged because they developed those structures precisely to keep themselves rich and powerful. This is the starting point of rightwing ideologies.

Those without power can only help the weak and marginalised, end wars and genocide, stop the ecological destruction of the planet by changing these power structures. This is the starting point of leftwing ideologies.

There is a further point. By definition, the right has the power and money to bankroll parties, media, think-tanks that claim to be on the left but are actually there to prop up existing power structures that benefit the right. Over many decades the right has developed an unparalleled expertise in the dark arts of worming its ideas into our heads, manipulating us into believing black is white, up is down.

Even if it wished to, the left lacks any equivalent power.

If the world looks confusing to you, it is probably because you are falling for these kind of "political" deceptions. You are voting for fake leftwing parties, watching fake leftwing TV news and reading fake leftwing papers quoting fake experts.

We keep ending up with the same corrupt parties, the same dishonest policies, the same wars of empire because we cannot see past the right’s mind-games.

Edit: I misread Democracy at Work as Democracy Now.

https://thegrayzone.com/?s=Douma

It does have one good one-liner though: “If you want most Americans never to find out about something, put it in a book.” In this case, OPCW lead investigator and whistleblower Ian Henderson’s The Syria Scam https://the307.substack.com/p/in-tell-all-book-opcw-whistleblower

Just two weeks after President Donald Trump sent a handwritten letter to Powell demanding lower interest rates, Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), accused Powell of breaking the law by failing to comply with government oversight regulations and lying to Congress about details of an approximately $2.5 billion planned renovation of the Fed’s headquarters.

While some central banks, such as the European Central Bank and the Bank of Mexico, have lowered their benchmark lending rate a few times this year, the Fed has not. One big reason for that is the major policy shifts since Trump took office. Officials have said they want to see how those changes affect the economy first before considering further rate cuts.

Powell for his part has avoided responding to Trump’s harsh criticism, noting that the Fed is only focused on successfully taming inflation and preserving the labor market’s health.

The latest criticism about the rising costs of the Fed’s headquarters may signal the administration is laying the groundwork to justify firing Powell, said Ed Mills, a policy analyst at Raymond James.

Trump and his allies have said the Fed’s decision to keep rates steady is politically motivated, but Powell has signaled Trump’s tariff policy – and its potential to stoke inflation – have played a role.